Poet in Residence

About the Poet in Residence

Our Poet in Residence program is open to anyone in Canada and includes a $4,000 grant and access to the Upstart & Crow upstairs writing studio space for at least a month, along with editing feedback and support. The expectation would be for the chosen poet to complete a chapbook or full-size poetry book through the residency, ready for publication (or submission to publishers). As part of the residency, they would participate in at least two public events or workshops, sharing their perspective with others.

Our 2025 recipient is Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal.

Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal (she/her) is a writer, facilitator, former lawyer and critical race feminist who grew up in an immigrant household on the traditional, present and future territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Tsawwassen and Musqueam First Nations (Surrey and North Delta, BC). She has spent over two decades using arts-based methodologies to explore justice, healing, and transformation, offering creative workshops in institutions and communities across Turtle Island.

Though she’s been writing and actively involved in the arts her entire life, Preeti didn’t allow herself to fully pursue the life of a writer until her 30s. She entered the University of Guelph’s MFA program as a nonfiction writer, graduated as a fiction writer, and then moved across the country to take care of her dying mother at which time poetry became her primary mode of expression—arriving with urgency and offering a language for what felt otherwise unspeakable. Since then, she’s written hundreds of poems, studied with beloved mentors, and explored how form, hybridity, magical realism, and polyphony can alter language to expand how we see, feel, and imagine. She is particularly interested in how language—so often used to colonize and desensitize—can be reimagined through poetry to return us to ourselves, oneness and each other.

Preeti’s work wrestles with grief, touch, sexuality, liberation, prayer, power, love, and diasporic Punjabi life. She holds a BA in International Relations (UBC), civil and common law degrees (McGill), a Master of Laws (UVic), and an MFA. She’s grateful to have received support from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, BC Arts Council, Banff Centre, VONA, and Deer Lake. Her work has been published widely in numerous literary journals and magazines such as PRISM International, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, Canadian Notes & Queries, The Humber Literary Review, Looseleaf, ti-TCR, Arc Poetry, and more. She firmly believes stories change the world by shifting how we see, feel, and exist with one another and the planet, and that there is deep power in developing and reclaiming the tools to tell our own. Learn more about her and her workshops at @write.with.preeti or https://linktr.ee/Jadooberry.